Lots of modern TVs have all sorts of backlight and contrast processing. If you go from a dark scene to the same scene with peak white in it, you can see the black levels change horribly on some displays.

(2014-05-07 07:21)macmus Wrote: Why this is intel bug ? netflix cannot address that ? I like addon for XBMC but this one does not have dolby

It is very clearly an Intel driver bug because the workaround involves changing the settings on the Intel driver. It has to do with protected audio path and DRM, so ultimately you should blame the studios for forcing us to deal with this garbage. To MrCrispy, I don't think this is the same bug you're talking about.

(2014-05-07 09:25)fritsch Wrote: It does not. Could be a known feature by your TV ... "optimizing Contrast" or something. Try xbmc Limited option unset and keep your hdmi on limited (remove the xrandr hack) and compare.

fritsch, your ability to remotely diagnose subtle weird stuff is truly amazing. My TV settings didn't seem to have any effect (I had all "smart" algorithms turned off anyhow), but doing what you suggested made a difference. In summary:

(2014-05-07 09:25)fritsch Wrote: It does not. Could be a known feature by your TV ... "optimizing Contrast" or something. Try xbmc Limited option unset and keep your hdmi on limited (remove the xrandr hack) and compare.

My many years old limited-rgb-range 46" LCD has almost no post processing. The pp-options that are there are fully deactivated.

Side note:
When the black-level-test-image is put in a video, the blacks are not crushed! Only fullscreen picture seems affected.
So after all it really may be a problem regarding fullscreen-pictures being processed differently than fullscreen-videos? I don't have any other explanation.
I even put out my old media player to compare the same videos and pictures and on the old player picture and video give the same result.

So you would guess Case 2 would be unlogical UI-wise for a limited-rgb-range TV, but still worth testing.

If i understood lmyllari correctly, Case 1 would be the preferred way for a limited range LCD (and more logical in terms of UI).
Since i don't use pictures at the moment, i don't mind that much which way i'm using. But if we can work towards a fix, would't hurt, would it? I'll stick with preferred Case 1 for now.

If i can do more testing to narrow the potential bug down, please let me know.

Greets!

BTW: Also to confirm: Everything else seems to work great since the kernel USB-bug was patched. Live-TV/PVR more stable than ever (even compared to my beloved 3.2.4 build from lmyllari)

I am considering buying a Haswell based NUC in the near future. I would like to go with a fanless set up but it seems all the nice small cases are sold overseas. I am based in the U.S. and was wondering where I can get a good passive heatsink style case without paying customs fees?

I just don't get why people are concerned with the tiny fan in this box. It's not like it is mounted to your head and makes a lot of noise. Mines been working just fine with openelec and would recommend.

I'm very very much a silent lover, so here my experience regarding fan noise:

D54250WYKH (i5, stock intel case, internal 2,5" SATA SSD)

I was willing to give the stock case a try before buying passive.

Fan control set to AUTO min 25 max 100.

Result:
Incredibly(!) silent while using OpenELEC. Fan stays at 25% all the time for me while watching fullscreen media. 25% means dead silent for this case. You can make the fan spin up very little and for a short time when you make stuff like putting transparent menus over a running video or transparent background video while going to homescreen. But even then the fan spins up only very little stops again almost right away when you resume watching media in normal fullscreen.

Summer isn't quite there yet but i've been happy for month now. No need for passive in my case.

It may be different for you if you live in a area with permanent high temperatures or you want to run windows.

I can only recommend buying the larger nuc case (H-models) with 2,5" option and trying it out with fan control auto 25-100. You may be surprised.

If i ever feel the need to switch to passive, i found the Akasa Tesla H a good option. Not the smallest case, but because of that larger surface it should do better than some smaller cases as some tests seem to confirm (afair).

My STB makes some noise, I can easily hear its hard disk spin. Even the receiver will emit a whine now and then. But these things are only audible when no media is playing, so I don't really mind. My main pc is quite loud because of fan noise, but I'm guessing the NUC fan even at full load will be nothing like that. I'd be more concerned about dust buildup and having to clean it periodically.